Eagles outpace Lions in second half
JESSIEVILLE — Jessieville kept pace with Mayflower in the first quarter, but it started to lose ground in the second as the Eagles defeated the Lions 66-57 at Jessieville Sports Arena Tuesday night.
Trailing 20-19 after eight minutes of play, Jarrett Davis planted a jump shot off teammate Landen Daley’s assist to pull ahead by 1 before senior Braxtyn McCuien’s slam dunk gave the Lions a slight edge.
With 5:31 on the clock, Mayflower junior Dalton Crumley sank a bucket, but Jessieville senior Charlie Davis found Daley on the outside to knot the score at 24-24. Mayflower senior Brandon Patterson went 1 for 2 from the free throw line before Jessieville sophomore Noah Futch responded with a bucket for the Lions’ final lead of the night.
“Our kids played hard,” said Jessieville head coach Jared White. “We’ve got to figure out a way to rebound against that team and figure out a way to just execute. I thought we had enough offense tonight, but defensively they got to the boards. When we did take a few shots that were questionable, they got the rebound and the run out. When we were set defensively, we weren’t bad, but the transition points killed us.”
Mayflower took off on a 9-0 run behind McCuien, B.J. Gilliam and Crumley for 34-26 edge at the break.
“We didn’t do a very good job of finishing out
the second quarter,” White said. “We had some questionable decisions. When we make a bad decision or take a bad shot, it turns into transition points for them. It went from a 3-point game with a minute and a half to an 8-point game at halftime and kind of came out as a stalemate in the third quarter. They kind of pulled away, and we got it back in, but they’re a tough team to have to climb uphill against.”
Futch produced the first bucket of the second half off a Jarrett Davis steal, but as the third quarter progressed, the Lions had trouble finding the rim as the Eagles kept a steady tempo to stretch out to a 20-point lead. Daley hit a pair of free throws with 1:33 before Gilliam’s 3-point play left the Eagles up 48-36.
Jessieville fired away on all cylinders behind Jarrett Davis and Daley to pull within 52-44, and both sides paced the court with balanced shots until the visitors rolled on a 6-0 stretch.
Jessieville has struggled with having an entire team ready to take to the court, but White is looking forward to when they’re able to be a complete unit once again.
“It’ll just be enjoyable when we do (and) if we can,” he said. “We’re gonna work on our offensive execution and just understand that we’ve got multiple threats out there and so basically we’ve got to train our guys to utilize our entire skillset — not just one good player being confident enough to make a play in his game. We’ve got to make everybody dangerous.”
Jarrett Davis paced Jessieville with 18 points, four rebounds and three steals. Futch finished with 11 points, three boards, two steals and an assist, Daley had 11 points, five assists, two steals and a board, and Charlie Davis had nine points, three rebounds, two assists, two steals and a block.
Junior Carson Hair came away with six points and three rebounds, and classmate Mathew Huff added 2 points, three steals and two boards.
Jessieville hosts Atkins Friday with the junior boys starting at 4:30 p.m.